Mexico by James Albert Michener — Read

At the beginning of the tenth century, when Nopiltzín was preoccupied with the discovery of pulque, there existed in a series of dark caves along a network of rivers that ran through the steaming jungles several hundred miles north of Mexico City a tribe of Indians who for three or four thousand years, at least, and possibly much longer, had kept alive in their tribal traditions memory of an age when they had lived in a high place. This recollection was so persistent that after the Conquest the tribe was given the name Altomec, a mixture of Spanish and Indian meaning "Those who seek a high place," but during the time of which I speak they were called by others either the Cave People or the Followers of Glittering-Fish Color-Bird.

They were a short-statured, very dark people. Their standard of living was abysmal. In three or four thousand years, huddling in their caves, they had failed to invent cloth, or to develop any simple decoration for their pottery, or to tame the turkey. But they had made two discoveries that were to remake the history of Mexico. Along with their relatives, the Aztecs, who were a little more advanced, the Cave People had learned the effectiveness of organized tribal action, and they had found a god ideally suited to lead them.